The Hanging Gardens is set to become the first Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Standard building in Limerick City under the Limerick 2030 initiative.

LEED is a building certification program used in the US that ensures buildings meet a specific set of standards in order to be labelled a green building.

Analog Devices’ headquarters in Raheen is the only other Gold Standard building in Limerick County.

Purchased from NAMA earlier this year, Senior Executive Planner of the Limerick City and County Council, Kieran Reeves, hopes that the Hanging Gardens new standard will attract a lot of interest from Foreign Direct Investment.

“LEED is an environmental standard that a lot of foreign direct investment companies, especially from the US like to see” he said.

“The Hanging Gardens will be an office development, we’re completing the old office that was half-built, and we’re building a new wing that we acquired at no.19 Thomond Office Supplies”.

“We’ll hope to have a contractor on site in February of next year and it should take one year to completed,” he added.

Two other main sites that have been acquired by Limerick 2030 are the Castletroy Film Hub, which was formally known as the Dell factory, and the Opera Centre.

The latter of which has also been singled out as a target for FDI by Cllr James Collins.

“The Opera Centre will be an IDA pipeline and we are speaking about major FDI, it has also drawn the attention of Sarsfield House and the Revenue intend on moving there,” he said.

However, Mr Reeves reiterated some details such as ownership must be clarified before the work goes ahead.

“We must go through a lot of details, how much is rent? Who will maintain the buildings, who will own the site? What happens to the building after the lease runs up? All these things are currently in discussion with the Revenue,” he said.